Chapter V: Preface (5)

‘… The town is now in possession of a Suliote chief, who has taken the castle into his own hands, and has quartered himself and his followers in all the best houses of the town, which is now newly building, and promises to be regular, and even elegant. The streets are quite straight, and cut one another at right angles, and the houses all have piazzas before them; but everything is now at a standstill, and the streets themselves, unpaved, are more like the courses of rivulets than anything else. It was a night of rejoicing, this being the Day of St. Dionysius, and all the common people were assembled in the bazaar, a sort of shambles, and the gentlemen in a coffee-room, smoking and playing cards, in their best dresses: most of them were fine-looking fellows, very quiet and polite. We had coffee there, and very capital it was, but thick and almost like chocolate. I should like to know how they make it. The Greeks there were all dressed in their white linen petticoats, embroidered coats, and shaggy capotes, except one old fellow, who had on an English box-coat, and one other fellow, whom, from his vulgar impudent countenance, I conclude to have been an English blackguard. They all say the Morea is in a most wretched state, full of banditti and pirates, so that you cannot go anywhere without an escort. Next day we found ourselves just off Ithaca, at breakfast-time, and got breakfast over before we entered the strait between Ithaca and Cephalonia. This was the first day that I attempted what is called sketching, and I made a tolerable hand of it; at least, I found out how to make memoranda that did to work upon afterwards. I can make no hand of colour, and think I shall hardly attempt it, till I have time to make some finished studies from nature. You and W[illy] care so little about classics, that I need not trouble you about Ulysses’ castle, Sappho’s leap, etc. We got here on Sunday night, and the rain came soon after us, and has persecuted us incessantly ever since. We got ashore yesterday and walked about the town, which is very picturesque, and exactly like the panorama….

‘We were at a ball at Corfu on the anniversary of the installation of the Ionian Government, at which all the native population were expected; but the day was so stormy that it made a poor show. I meant to have got you a real Albanian capote, but they were not to be had at Corfu, and the cherry-stick tobacco-pipes were too dear.’

To the Rev. ISAAC WILLIAMS, Jan. 10, 1833.

‘We spent Christmas Day at Malta in an incessant row, taking in coals, while the bells of all the many Churches of Valetta told what was going on in that land of superstition;――watched one poor fellow in quarantine all day, saying prayers to himself, and looking towards the Church nearest on the shore, opposite to the Lazaretto.[101] The time is now drawing nigh when we shall spend fifteen long days in that abode of the unblessed. It is now the 10th of January, and we are just in sight of Malta, on our return from the Ionian Islands. We have not seen them under the most favourable circumstances, as the weather has been wintry, _i.e._, either very stormy or very cold. I have been often longing for the bright hot Spanish sun which conducted us from the Bay of Biscay to Gibraltar…. Among other things, we spent half an hour in the coffee-house [at Zante] where the Greek merchants were assembled for the holiday evening: a little wretched dirty place, but the company were very polite to us, and we were surprised at the cleanness of their dresses, and a certain refinement in their appearance and manner. We were under the guidance of Major L[ongley] brother of L[ongley] of H[arrow][102] who is Governor of Cythera, and knows something of the habits and language of the people. The company all rose to him, and sat down when he said κάθεστε; but they pronounce so queerly, that one can hardly ever make out a word, although their newspapers are quite intelligible, and differ but little from old Greek. I would give much to live among them for a bit, and get into their notions. As it is, we have seen nothing but the surface, and heard the notions of the resident English, which cannot be relied on…. In Corfu, the breed is very mongrel, mixed up with Venetian and Italian blood; so that, altogether, the sight was uninteresting, except that when one saw a splendid set of apartments, with magnificent English furniture, and brilliantly illuminated, with a band of music, etc., it contrasted itself oddly with the thought of old Thucydides and the Corcyrean sedition. The remains of the old town are very scanty, and one cannot make out anything satisfactory about τὸ Ἡραῖον, etc. There is a rock that they call Ulysses’ ship; but I suspect the name of a Venetian origin. In one place there is the remains of an Ionic temple, on a very small scale, lately discovered; but we had no time to go into antiquarian questions. We rode over most of the island, and saw several of the villages, all of which bear marks of having been tenanted by a rich population; but everything is of a Venetian character. I cannot make out whether the people are religious or not; yet they seem, on the whole, to be an innocent civil set. Every small knot of families have their priest and their chapel, but no parishes that we could hear of. Their Churches are very small, but great numbers of them: two or three to a small village. [Newman] and my father went into one in an out-of-the-way village, in which there [were] fine silver lamps, a copy of Leonardo da Vinci’s Last Supper, well executed, and several pictures of Saints, in the hard German style of the fifteenth century. I went twice into the Church which is the depository of the body of St. Spiridion;[103] and people were praying there both times, one person apparently from the higher classes. In the chapel where the body lies, lamps are always kept dimly burning, and the people go in and kiss the shrine. The feet are stained with tears, and there are many splendid offerings there of precious stones. They keep all the Saints’ days by going to Church, and playing cards afterwards; and on the fast days they fast fairly…. On our way back from Corfu, the curtain was drawn back which had before hung over the scenery, and the long ridges of the Acarnanian mountains appeared in full splendour; among these many points in the range of Pindus were visible in the distance; and from Zante we certainly saw the summit of Parnassus, though partially intercepted with clouds. To look at, Mount St. Meri, in the north of Morea, is the most magnificent, but I do not know its classical name.[104] And now I suppose I must bid farewell to these extraordinary places for the rest of my life; having only just seen enough of them to know how well worth seeing they are.’

The fifteen days of detention were not quite so annoying or so monotonous as the travellers had feared. ‘This Lazaret,’ says Newman in the course of a long letter to his sister Jemima, ‘was built by the Knights [of St. John at Malta] for the Turks…. We burn olive wood. I assure you we make ourselves very comfortable. We feed well from an hotel across the water. The Froudes draw and paint. I have hired a violin, and bad as it is, it sounds grand in such spacious halls. I write verses, and get up some Italian, and walk up and down the rooms about an hour and a half daily; and we have a boat, and are allowed to go about the harbour.’ An incident on the quarantine island is responsible, in Newman’s biography, for the one and only tiff between himself and Froude.[105] In reality, it was no tiff at all, as Froude was wholly innocent of offence. (Newman, it may be remarked in passing, had just written his _David and Jonathan_.) It seems that during the January nights in the Lazaretto, all three of the English travellers used to hear unaccountable footsteps, in the rooms and galleries, their own doors having been locked from the outside. On one occasion Newman thought he heard the noises in Archdeacon Froude’s room. ‘The fourth time it occurred, I hallooed out: “Who’s there?” and sat up in my bed ready to spring out. A deep silence followed, and I sat waiting a considerable time: and thus I caught my cold.’ A week later, there is no clean bill of health to send Mrs. Newman. ‘The weather has been unusually severe here. My cold caught in the Lazaret ripened the day I came out of it into the most wretched cough I ever recollect having, as hard as the stone walls, and far more tight than the windows.’ In short, Newman was housebound, a close prisoner, and miserable enough, despite his successful completing of his ‘Patriarchal Sonnets.’ Archdeacon Froude forbade his going out to Church. The next day, Monday, he confides to the all-sympathetic bosom of his family: ‘I am properly taken at my word. I have been sighing for rest and quiet. This is the sixth day since I left the Lazaret, and I have hardly seen or spoken to anyone. The Froudes dine out every day; and are out all the morning, of course. Last night I put a blister on my chest; and never having had one on before, you may fancy my awkwardness in taking it off and dressing the place of it this morning. I ought to have had four hands. Our servant was with the Froudes…. Well, I am set upon a solitary life, and therefore ought to have experience what it is; nor do I repent…. I have sent to the library, and got _Marriage_[106] to read. Don’t smile――this juxtaposition is quite accidental! You are continually in my thoughts. I know what kindness I should have at home.’ He ends dismally, not without citing the Apostolic precedent of going not alone but two and two: ‘I wonder how long I shall last without any friend about me!’ One can imagine the anxiety and indignation of the devoted hearts at Iffley. Early in April their unfriended John Henry received his sister Jemima’s answer, distinctly uncomplimentary to Hurrell Froude; whereupon Newman rushed into explanation: he could not have Froude blamed; he had begged to be left alone (‘you know I can be very earnest in entreating to be left alone’): he had refused his repeated solicitations even to let him sit by him and read to him; he had, in short, driven him away. Hurrell, indeed, was not cut out by Nature for a nurse. Be that as it may, would it be far wrong to surmise that it was influenza which had been playing its now-well-understood tricks on Newman? But he made up like a lover for his passing semi-accusation. Froude, as it happened, was singularly well at this time, though the reprieve from discomfort was to be but brief.

The three companions went from Malta to Messina, where, in wretched weather, they had divers small misadventures, shared with Rohan-Chabots. Hurrell kept, that week, a sort of journal of events; and the pages describing the capture of lodgings at Palermo seem worth transcription, since they show the revered Vicar of S. Mary-the-Virgin defeated by female diplomacy, and in the unexpected rôle of a sprinter.[107]

‘We got to Palmero about eleven or twelve next morning [Feb. 11, 1833]: the sea calm, the sun hot, and everything beautiful to a degree. Here we knew that there was to be a scramble for rooms; so when we anchored, [Newman] and I made a rush for the ladder, and were first in the boat; but unfortunately, when we were in it we found that we had mistaken the landing-place. Our boat was nearest the Quay; and we had to clear out round all the others to make for the custom-house and town, which were a mile off; also, our boat had only one man. So we saw two other boats give us the go-by, in one of which was the wife of the Governor of Moldavia and Wallachia:[108] they landed about four minutes before us, and we thought to make up our way by running. I was soon left behind by [Newman] and the boatman. When they passed the Countess, I saw her tap a fellow on the shoulder, who ran off for a coach, in which she set off as hard as she could for the Albergo di Londra. We found afterward that she had secured Page’s whole house by letter; and not contented with this, she had two servants ahead, who, when [Newman] came up with them, raced him; and being fresh, they contrived to keep ahead by a foot or two, so as just to bespeak Jaquerie’s whole house before he could speak to the landlord. On this, we despaired, and put up with the first place we could find to hide our noses in: luckily, it had no fleas! and that was more than we had bargained for.’ Newman, in his own letters, does not single out for praise the one negative charm of their temporary dwelling. “It is astonishing,” he says from the depth of English decency, “how our standard falls in these parts!”

The Archdeacon, with his attendant spirits, was off at four in the morning for Egesta. They had a carriage to themselves, drawn by three mules with bells, and a boy and a guide, besides the driver; much æsthetic rapture and next to nothing to eat, seems to have been their portion. But the culminating point, the complete satisfaction of the heart’s desire, was Rome. ‘All the cities I ever saw are but as dust, even dear Oxford inclusive, compared with its majesty and glory,’ writes Newman to the Rose Hill auditory. This enthusiasm of his was not without its scruples and torments. He adds an occasional colophon of genuine self-comfort, being sure that ‘our creed,’ the while, is ‘purer than the Roman’: a matter which, apparently, Hurrell forgot to dwell upon. He never had to rid himself of the least taint of the Pharisee, although he had been scandalised enough at Naples. That alien city of all badness had given his notions of its nominal religion a rude shock. Frederick William Faber, passing through Cologne in 1839, got, unwillingly, the very same sort of painful disedification which Froude got at Naples.[109] The sadness of the decay of an ideal, even though a misplaced and mistimed one, hangs over some of the letters sped towards holy Oxford.

To the Rev. JOHN KEBLE, March 16, 1833.

‘_Rome._――… I should like to be back at the election much; _sed fata vetant_. Being abroad is a most unsatisfactory thing, and the idleness of it deteriorating. I shall connect very few pleasing associations with this winter, and I don’t think I shall come home much wiser than I went. The only μάθησις on which I can put my hand, as having resulted from my travels is, that the whole Christian system all over Europe “_tendit visibiliter ad non esse_.”[110] The same process which is going on in England and France is taking its course everywhere else; and the clergy in these Catholic countries seem as completely to have lost their influence, and to submit as tamely to the State, as ever we can do in England…. Egesta … by good luck we have been able to see, though we were obliged to abandon the rest of our Sicilian expedition. It is the most strangely romantic place I ever saw or conceived.[111] It is no use attempting to describe it, except that the ruins of the city stand on the top of a very high hill, precipitous on three sides, and very steep on the other, literally towering up to heaven, with scarcely a mule-track leading to it, and all round the appearance of an interminable solitude. After going some miles through a wild uninhabited country, you approach it by winding up a zigzag path cut in the face of what looks a perpendicular and inaccessible rock, and, till you have got some way up, it wears so little the appearance of a track, that without guides no one would venture on. At the top the old walls of the town can be distinctly traced, where one would think that mortal foot had never or rarely been, and numbers of tooled stones [are] scattered in all directions, evidently the remains of well-finished buildings. Here and there is a broken arch which makes one fancy the remains to be Roman, and in the most conspicuous place a fine theatre, nearly perfect. When you come to the ascent on the opposite side, you all at once see the Temple, in what seems a plain at the bottom, with its pediments and all its columns perfect, and only differing from what it was at first in the deep rich colouring of the weather-stains. When we saw it there was a large encampment of shepherds in the front of it, with their wolf-dogs and wild Salvator-like dresses; and, by-the-by, as we found afterwards, with no great objection to lead Salvator-like lives; for when by some accident we were separated from one another, they got round [Newman] shouting “_Date moneta!_” and, he thinks, would certainly have taken it by force, except for a man with a gun who is placed there by Government, as _custode_ of the Temple, and who came up when the others were getting most troublesome. On getting close to the Temple, we found that it stands on the brink of a precipitous ravine 200 or 300 feet deep, which gives a grandeur to the whole scene even beyond what it gets from the mountains and the solitude. Compared with Egesta, Pæstum is a poor concern, and so is Naples when compared with Palermo.

‘But Rome is the place, after all, where there is most to astonish one, and [it is] of all ages, even the present. I don’t know that I take much interest in the relics of the Empire, magnificent as they are, although there is something sentimental in seeing (as one literally may), the cows and oxen _Romanoque foro et lautis mugire Carinis_. But the thing which most takes possession of one’s mind is the entire absorption of the old Roman splendour in an unthought-of system: to see their columns, and marbles, and bronzes, which had been brought together at such an immense cost, all diverted from their first objects, and taken up by Christianity: St. Peter and St. Paul standing at the top of Trajan’s and Antonine’s columns, and St. Peter buried in the Circus of Nero, with all the splendour of Rome concentrated in his mausoleum. The immense quantity of rare marbles, which are the chief ornament of the Churches here, could scarcely have been collected except by the centre of an universal Empire, which had not only unlimited wealth at its command, but access to almost every country; and now one sees all this dedicated to the Martyrs. Before I came here I had no idea of the effect of coloured stone in architecture; but the use Michael Angelo has made of it in St. Peter’s shows one at once how entirely that style is designed with reference to it, and how absurd it was in Sir C. Wren to copy the form when he could copy nothing more. The coloured part so completely disconnects itself from the rest, and forms such an elegant and decided relief to it, that the two seem like independent designs that do not interfere. The plain stone-work has all the simplicity of a Grecian temple, and the marbles set it off just as a fine scene or a glowing sky would. I observe that the awkwardness of mixing up arched and unarched architecture is thus entirely avoided, as all the arched work is coloured, and the lines of the uncoloured part are all either horizontal or perpendicular. So Michael Angelo adds his testimony to my theory about Gothic architecture.

‘As to Raphael’s pictures, I have not had time to study them with attention. The most celebrated of them, especially your friend Heliodorus, are so damaged or dirty that one cannot see them distinctly except close; they say we should use an opera-glass. All that the painters say of Raphael tends to exalt him as a poet and a man of genius, but rather at the expense of his technical skill; he and Michael Angelo seem, by what they say, to be counterparts. But I wish I could hope to form an opinion of my own about it.

‘There is an English artist here, a Mr. S[evern],[112] to whom [Newman] had an introduction, and who certainly is a very clever man, who gave us a most curious and interesting account of a German school of painters that is now growing up in Rome. He says that several of them are here, living on pensions from German Princes, particularly the King of Bavaria, and are studying Raphael in a very singular way: curious fellows, with a great deal of original enthusiasm (utterly unlike the βαναυσοί of England), who have got it into their heads that the way to study Raphael is not to copy him, but to study the works he studied, and to put their mind into the attitude in which he formed his conceptions. So they poke away at the old hard pictures of early Masters, with stiff drapery and gilt backgrounds, and are so intent on dissociating Christian and classical art, that they think grace and beauty bought too dear, if they tend to disturb the mind by pagan associations. One of these fellows,[113] he said, had become intimate with him in a curious way. Mr. S[evern] has made colouring his principal study; he seems to be a bit of an enthusiast himself, and has been aiming at combining the colouring of the Venetian school with the designs of the Roman. Well, this German, who is a shy, reserved man, having been one day in Mr. S[evern’s] studio, returned the next day with ten or twelve of his German friends, and again, the day after, with as many more; and so on, for some time. At last Mr. S[evern], who took it as a great compliment, asked him what it was that had attracted his notice. He said he had always gone on a notion that colour had nothing to do with the poetry of painting, but was merely sensual, and that a Madonna he had seen of Mr. S[evern’s] made him alter his mind; so he had been bringing friends to see if they felt the same about it. Since this time they have been very intimate; but the man is so reserved, in general, that except for this accident he might have kept his notions to himself. Mr. S[evern] says his designs are quite in the spirit of Raphael, and that his whole mind is so taken up with Catholic ἦθος, that he has given up his Protestantism, and is a rigid conformer to all the ordinances of the Church. I have prosed about this because I was struck with it. I hope it is no mare’s nest…. I don’t know whether I mentioned to you that [Newman] and [Williams] are going to indite verses for _The British Magazine_, under the title _Lyra Apostolica_? [Rose][114] would not take a sonnet that I made, because it was too fierce; but says it may come by-and-by. I will write it out for your edification and criticism.

‘ΠΕΡI ΤΗΣ ΜΙΣΗΤΟΥ ΣΤΑΣΕΩΣ[115]

‘“The Powers that be are ordained of God.”

‘Yes, mark the words: deem not that Saints alone
Are Heaven’s true servants, and His laws fulfil
Who rules o’er just and wicked. He from ill
Culls good; He moulds the Egyptian’s heart of stone
To do Him honour, and e’en Nero’s throne
Claims as His ordinance; before Him still
Pride bows unconscious, and the rebel will
Most does His bidding, following most its own.
Then grieve not at their high and palmy state,
Those proud bad men, whose unrelenting sway
Hath shattered holiest things, and led astray
Christ’s little ones: they are but tools of fate,
Duped rebels, doomed to serve a Power they hate,
To earn a traitor’s guerdon, yet obey.

‘I mean to do one on Lord Grey’s interpretation of the Coronation Oath.[116] Will you do some? A mixture, some fierce and some meek: the plan is to have none above twenty lines…. My cough is just the same as when I left England. The climate is worse than an English autumn, and sight-seeing does no good. I was almost well at Malta, and if I had stayed there should have been quite so now. I expect to see the original Epistolæ S. Thomæ in the Vatican Library.’

Overbeck seems to have attracted Froude purely, or chiefly, on moral grounds, but he found at Rome an abiding object of enthusiasm in the lovely genius of Francesco Francia. One of his letters to his second brother, from Leghorn, illustrates both his own passion for thoroughness, and the range and zest of his lifelong interest in arts and crafts. He was ‘an ingeniose person,’ and constantly invites the application of that favourite and comprehensive seventeenth-century word.

To WILLIAM FROUDE, April 12, 1833.

‘… If you choose, you may easily find out in London what is the particular process by which the red colour of glass is produced from gold, and also in what way they would go to work to give glass a vitrified coat of gold, retaining its own colour; and whether any accident in attempting the latter might effect the former. For it has always struck me as a puzzle how so recondite an idea as that of producing a ruby tint from a yellow metal should come into the heads of the early glass-painters; and it has occurred to me that some such accident as I have guessed at above might be the key to the puzzle, for the practice of giving glass a vitrified coat of gold for the purpose of mosaic work was very common, long before the use of coloured glass in windows had been thought of, and specimens of it are to be seen in Rome of almost every age between [A.D.] 400 and [A.D.] 1000. Please not to forget this question, or be contented with vague answers. It will be likely to take some time and trouble to get at the truth, but it is curious, and there is no hurry, and you will at any rate have more opportunities than I shall. The best red colour that has been produced in modern times has been managed by a French chemist, and there is a wholesale house of his goods somewhere in Holborn. The Pope’s mosaic manufactory in Rome is curious: there are eighteen thousand shades of colour in it, which can be looked out as in a directory. Some of the imitations of pictures which they have made are so perfect that you must look close before you can see joinings and transitions of colour; and they have the advantage over every kind of painting, being mellow from the first and brilliant to the last. In St. Peter’s there are many very fine ones, copies of all the most famous pictures, and they are said to have cost 4500_l._ a piece. St. Peter’s itself is the great attraction of Rome, worth all the classics put together. I think the dome is built with all the layers of stone horizontal, so that the principle of the arch applies not to the vertical section, but only to the horizontal. I am not sure of this, but I think so.’

It does not appear, though Newman and Froude saw the Pope’s mosaic manufactory, that they saw the Pope himself, Gregory XVI. They seem to have gained their chief vistas of Roman society through their acquaintance with the Prussian Chargé d’Affaires, Baron Bunsen,[117] and his English wife, at whose house of all hospitality Sir Walter Scott, then near his end, had been the beloved guest less than a year before. Hurrell must have had his own impressions of the excellent Bunsen, with his pleasant Teutonic habit of holding up his finger and hushing the company, before he began to speak. There is no mention of our modest and all-observing pilgrims in the published correspondence either of Bunsen or of Joseph Severn, for 1832-1833.

On April 13, 1833, Hurrell sends to the Rev. John Frederick Christie one of the most discussed letters in the first volume of the _Remains_.

‘It would not become me to apologise for not having written before, since I much doubt my capacity[118] to produce anything worth the postage. Nevertheless, I have for some time been intending to write to you, and can’t account for having let so much time slip through my fingers. My father and I are now on our way home, having left [Newman] to retrace his steps to Sicily…. I hope to be at Genoa to-morrow morning…. Between [Lyons] and Paris, I hope to visit and make drawings of some of the Abbeys, etc., which are connected with the history of St. Thomas of Cant. “Sixth and lastly,” if the Fates allow, we shall cross from Havre to Southampton by the first steamer in May … soon after which you may expect to see me in Chapel. I congratulate you on having got over your first audit so prosperously;[119] … it is better occupation than travelling, take my word for it. It is really melancholy to think how little one has got for one’s time and money. The only thing I can put my hand on as an acquisition is having formed an acquaintance with a man of some influence at Rome, Monsignor [Wiseman][120] the head of the [English] College, who has enlightened [Newman] and me on the subject of our relations to the Church of Rome. We got introduced to him to find out whether they would take us[121] in on any terms to which we could twist our consciences, and we found to our dismay that not one step could be gained without swallowing the Council of Trent as a whole! We made our approaches to the subject as delicately as we could. Our first notion was that the terms of communion were, within certain limits, under the control of the Pope … or, that in case he could not dispense solely, yet at any rate the acts of one Council might be rescinded by another; indeed, that in Charles the First’s time it had been intended to negociate a reconciliation on the terms on which things stood before the Council of Trent. But we found, to our horror, that the doctrine of the Infallibility of the Church made the acts of each successive Council obligatory for ever, that what had been once decided could never be meddled with again, in fact, that they were committed finally and irrevocably, and could not advance one step to meet us, even though the Church of England should again become what it was in Laud’s time….

‘… So much for the Council of Trent, for which Christendom has to thank Luther and the Reformers. [Newman] declares that ever since I heard this I have become a staunch Protestant, which is a most base calumny on his part, though I own it has altogether changed my notions of the Roman Catholics, and made me wish for a total overthrow of their system. I think that the only τόπος now is “the ancient Church of England,” and, as an explanation of what one means, “Charles the First” and “the Nonjurors.” When I come home I mean to read and write all sorts of things; for now that one is a Radical, there is no use in being nice![122] I wish you had sent a longer postscript to [Newman] about the position of things; all I have heard, directly or indirectly, has made me long to be home again. You don’t say whether you have done anything for the _L[yra] A[postolica]_?[123]…. Tell [Isaac Williams] that I think he has used me basely to send me a mere scribble of a few lines, prosing about some theory of poetry, when there were such a lot of atrocities going on on all sides, of which one can get no tolerable account through the papers.

‘_Genoa, April 15._――Here we are, as at Leghorn, detained a day beyond our time, though there is a perfect calm, because these absurd fellows are afraid of a swell which was got up by last night’s wind. The more I have to do with these wretched Neapolitans, the more my first impressions about them are confirmed. I wonder how anyone can tolerate either them or their town, which is as nasty and uninteresting a place as I ever set foot in. As to this Genoa, I should not grumble at being detained here, if I were in plight for sight-seeing, for it is truly magnificent, both in itself and in its situation; but, unfortunately, I was taken with a very severe feverish cold the morning we landed, _i.e._, the day before yesterday; and that day and yesterday was confined to my bed, where I should probably be now but that I had to get up early, in hopes the vessel would keep its appointment…. Never advise a friend of yours to come abroad for his health! It would be very well if one could have Fortunatus’ cap, and wish one’s self at Rome; but travelling does more harm than change of climate does good.

‘While we were at Rome [Newman] and I tried hard to get up the march-of-mind phraseology about pictures and statues, and we hoped we were making some little progress under the auspices of a clever English artist, to whom we had an introduction: but, unfortunately for our peace of mind, just before our departure we became acquainted with [a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge], who, though he had not been in Italy much longer than ourselves, had attained an eminence so far beyond what we could even in thought aspire to, that we gave the thing up in despair, and retire upon the τόπος, that “we don’t enter into [those] technicalities.” Certainly those C[ambridge] men are wonderful fellows; I know no one but [Head][124] that could compete with them at all. They know everything, examine everything, and dogmatise about everything; they have paid particular attention to the geological structure of this place, and the botany of that, and the agriculture of another, and they are antiquaries, and artists, and scholars, and, above all, puff off one another with the assiduity of our friends the [W.]s. W[hewell’s][125] book, and S[edgwick’s][126] Lectures, and T[hirlwall’s][127] research, and H[are’s][128] taste, pop upon one at every turn…. We mean to make as much as we can out of our acquaintance with Monsignor [Wiseman], who (by the by), is really too nice a person to talk nonsense about. He desired me to apply to him, if on any future occasion I had to consult the Vatican Library: and a transaction of that sort would sound well….’

The ‘transaction would sound well’: this, as if the writer’s study were only to heighten others’ opinion of him! Newman was surely right in calling attention, years after, to this habit of Froude’s of depreciating, nay, belying, his own motives. It was not an affectation, but it was a little piece of sheer cruelty.

The friends had parted at Rome, the Froudes very loath to leave Newman behind; and he, on his part, roaming about the Janiculum after they had gone, in a silent passion of grief, reproaching himself for his wilful fancy to return, under a sort of romantic obsession, to Sicily alone. There he was all but destined to meet an untimely death. Hurrell finished his long letter to Mr. Christie as he moved homeward.

‘_Marseilles, April 22._――This France is certainly a most delicious place: we landed in Hyères Bay, owing to a storm from the north-west, and found everything so warm and green that I could quite enter into John of Salisbury’s[129] feelings. The people, too, [are] so extremely civil that I cannot help hoping there may yet be the seven thousand in Israel, and that sometime or other we may be able to talk of _la belle France_ with some kind of pleasure. I feel like a great fool here, from not being able to talk French. In Italy half the population kept me in countenance, but here it is a constant humiliation. And what is worst, I can’t hope to make progress; for having learned the little I know by writing and not [by] speaking, I annex wrong-shaped words to all the sounds. It is like talking Latin[130] to a foreigner.’

Again, on May 23, to William Froude, is expressed further commendation of the French people, founded on the keenest instinctive understanding of them: an understanding even more unusual then than now. Newman, until later, was certainly far from sharing it, or wishing to learn to share it. The ordinary attitude of the contemporary Oxford mind was frankly, though playfully expressed, by the young W. R. Churton, some years before. He gallantly addresses France: ‘What have I seen in thee that should make me long to see thee again? Have I seen a gentleman from Calais to Beauvoisin? Have I seen one gleam of poetry in the country or its inhabitants?’[131] Hurrell Froude was ‘un-English’ enough to be arrested, but not repelled, while on the Continent, by the spectacle of extra-English human nature. We have heard him longing, at Zante, to ‘live among them a bit, and get into their notions.’ This beautiful and uncommon openness of mind stamps him an ideal traveller, despite his lack of opportunity; at no single point of a hurried route, beset with difficulties, could he look far below the surface of things. But it is strikingly inaccurate to say of him, as Mr. Mozley does, that he lacked not only opportunity, but curiosity, ‘to see the interior of either the political or the religious systems they came upon.’[132]

‘What I have seen since my last letter ends, has been more interesting than anything else except Rome. We stopped about at many places in the central part of France, to see out-of-the-way things connected with Becket’s history, and found some of them so very curious and striking in themselves, that they would have amply repaid us by their own merits. But what I was most interested with was, that the French seem to me to have been so grossly belied as a nation. I never saw a people that tempted me to like them so much, on a superficial observation. I declare, if I was called upon to make a definition of their national character, I should say they were a primitive innocent people. The fact seems to be that France is governed by a small despotic oligarchy, the aristocracy of wealth, who by their agitating spirit have contrived to get the franchise so restricted as to secure to themselves a majority in the Chamber, and the command of the military, by which they keep France under such a strong hand…. There is now in France a High Church party who are Republicans,[133] and wish for universal suffrage, on the ground that in proportion as the franchise falls lower the influence of the Church makes itself more felt; at present its limits about coincide with those of the infidel faction. Don’t be surprised if one of these days you find us turning Radicals on similar grounds.’

The next communication posted to Mr. Keble, on June 26, contained a nameless poem. The title and the motto here given belong to the version in _Lyra Apostolica_.

‘TREMBLING HOPE.

“And the Spirit and the Bride say, Come. And let him that heareth
say, Come. And let him that is athirst come. And whosoever will,
let him take the water of life freely.”

‘O Lord, I hear: but can it be
The gracious word was meant for me?
O Lord, I thirst: but who shall tell
The secret of that Living Well
By whose waters I may rest,
And slake this lip unblest?

O Lord, I will, but cannot do!
My heart is hard, my faith untrue.
The Spirit and the Bride say, Come;
The eternal ever-blessed Home
Oped its portals at my birth;
But I am chained to earth.

The Golden Keys,[134] each eve and morn,
I see them with a heart forlorn:
Lest they should iron prove to me.
O set my heart at liberty!
May I seize what Thou dost give,
Seize tremblingly; and live.’

‘Very flat, I know,’ the author says, in his usual undecorative manner; but he adds: ‘I wrote it the night before you went; I wanted to show it you, that you might do one on “He that testifieth these things saith: Surely I come quickly”; and then, after the verse, to finish with: “Even so, come, Lord JESUS.” I think that so it might make a composition on which some people’s thoughts would run.[135] You may think all this bother; but I cannot help fancying that this sort of arrangement is worth some little trouble.’ Hurrell’s poem stands collocated with Keble’s ‘Encouragement’ in the _Lyra_, with its opening ‘Fear not’: and its heartening beauty is almost a direct address to the burdened spirit who called it forth:

‘Surely the time is short:
Endless the task and art
To brighten for the ethereal Court
A soiled earth-drudging heart!
But He, the dread Proclaimer of that hour,
Is pledged to thee in love, as to thy foes in power.’

Even the text from S. John, which Hurrell had suggested as colophon, stands under his separate β after Keble’s poem, in every edition, as if by some solemn little rubrical observance. Both Keble and Newman were most careful, in all these delicate ways, to preserve their friend’s least touch upon the early printed work of the Movement. It was his death which led to the revelation of the authorship of all the poems in _Lyra Apostolica_. They would else have remained strictly anonymous. ‘One of the writers in whom the work originated,’ says Newman in his very brief preface, dated at Oxford on All Saints’ Day of 1836, ‘having been taken from his friends … it seemed desirable … to record what belonged to him, while it was possible to do so; and this has led to a general discrimination of the poems, by signatures at the end of each.’

Two days after ‘Trembling Hope,’ on June 28, Hurrell sends to his old Tutor the most beautiful, and also the most characteristic of his verses.

‘DANIEL.

εἰσὶν εὐνοῦχοι, οἵτινεσ εὐνούχισαν ἑαυτοὺς διὰ τὴν βασιλείαν τῶν
οὐρανῶν ――S. MATT. xix. 12.[136]

‘Son of sorrow, doomed by fate
To a lot most desolate,
To joyless youth and childless age;
Last of thy father’s lineage;
Blighted being! whence hast thou
That lofty mien and cloudless brow?

Ask’st thou whence that cloudless brow?
Bitter is the cup, I trow:
A cup of weary well-spent years,
A cup of sorrows, fasts, and tears;
That cup whose virtue can impart
Such calmness to the troubled heart.

Last of his father’s lineage, he
Many a night on bended knee,
In hunger many a lifelong day,
Hath striven to cast his slough away.
Yea, and that long prayer is granted:
Yea, his soul is disenchanted.

O blest above the sons of men!
For thou, with more than Prophet’s ken,
Deep in the secrets of the tomb
Hast read thine own, thine endless doom;
Thou by the hand of the Most High
Art sealed for immortality.

So may I read thy story right,
And in my flesh so tame my spright,
That when the Mighty Ones go forth,
And from the east and from the north
Unwilling ghosts shall gathered be,
I, in my lot,[137] may stand with thee!’

And immediately after, linked with a quotation from the beloved Eclogues: ‘I send you some sawney verses…. Can these be doctored into anything available, or are they dotings?’

‘OLD SELF AND NEW SELF.[138]

NEW SELF.

‘Why sittest thou on that sea-girt rock,
With downward look and sadly-dreaming eye?
Playest thou beneath with Proteus’ flock,
Or with the far-bound sea-bird wouldst thou fly?

OLD SELF.

I sit upon this sea-girt rock
With downward look and dreaming eye;
But neither do I sport with Proteus’ flock,
Nor with the far-bound sea-bird would I fly.
I list the splash, so clear and chill,
Of yon old fisher’s solitary oar;
I watch the waves, that rippling still,
Chase one another o’er the marble shore.

NEW SELF.

Yet from the splash of yonder oar
No dreary sound of sadness comes to me;
And the fresh waves that beat the shore,
How merrily they splash, how merrily!

OLD SELF.

I mourn for the delicious days
When those calm sounds fell on my childish ear,
A stranger yet to the wild ways
Of triumph and remorse, of hope and fear.

NEW SELF.

Mourn’st thou, poor soul? and wouldst thou yet
Call back the things which shall not, can not be?
Heaven must be won, not dreamed; thy task is set:
Peace was not made for earth, nor rest for thee.’

Four other sacred poems which Hurrell wrote in 1833 may as well be given here. He and Newman burst into song together, though he with far more remote and infrequent music. Probably no lyrist ever had such a poor opinion of himself. But in the qualities of clearness, simplicity, orderly thought and noble severity, there is something very remarkable in Hurrell’s few brief scattered verses. They have a strong singleness and sad transparency, the tone of them a little chilly, yet almost Virgilian, and arrestingly beautiful; they, like himself, are impersonal, and full of character; abstinent, concentrated, true. The unexpected grace is their cunning harmony, and the trick of that is neither derived nor deliberately invented. His every line instinctively sings and flies. He has nothing to match a certain refrain of Newman’s, in what he calls his ‘ecclesiastical carol,’――

‘For scantness is still Heaven’s might.’

It is a good instance of an always interesting literary anomaly that such a line, in its raucous sibilation, should have been produced by an accomplished musician, whereas unfailing melody belongs to Froude, who, loving naturally what he once called ‘the bright and silent pleasures of poetry,’ had small sense of music as an independent art. Yet Newman certainly was capable of a sustained grandeur, as in his verses on Greek models, which Froude did not attempt, and could not attain.

‘TYRE.

‘High on the stately wall
The spear of Arvad hung;
Through corridor and hall
Gemaddin’s[139] war-note rung.
Where are they now? The note is o’er:
Yes! for a thousand years, and more,
Five fathom deep beneath the sea,
Those halls have lain all silently,
Nought listing save the mermaid’s song,
While rude sea-monsters roam the corridors along.

Far from the wondering[140] East
Tubal and Javan came;
And Araby the blest,
And Kedar, mighty name.
Now on that shore, a lonely guest,
Some dripping fisherman may rest,
Watching on rock or naked stone
His dark net spread before the sun,
Unconscious of the dooming lay
That broods o’er that dull spot, and there shall brood for aye.’

‘SIGHT AGAINST FAITH.

‘“And Lot went out, and spake unto his sons-in-law that married his
daughters, and said: ‘Up, get you out of this place; for the
Lord will destroy this city.’ But he seemed as one that mocked,
unto his sons-in-law.”

‘Sunk not the sun behind yon dusky hill
Glorious as he was wont? The starry sky
Spread o’er the earth in tranquil majesty,――
Discern’st thou, in its clear deep, aught of ill?
Or in this lower world, so fair and still,
Its palaces and temples towering high,
Or where old Jordan, gliding calmly by,
Pours o’er the misty plain his mantle chill?
Dote not of fear, old man, where all is joy!
And Heaven and earth thy augury disown;
And Time’s eternal course rolls smoothly on,
Fraught with fresh blessings, as day follows day.
The All-Bounteous hath not given to take away;
The All-Wise hath not created to destroy!’

‘FAREWELL TO FEUDALISM.[141]

‘“The grass withereth, the flower fadeth: but the word of our God
shall stand for ever.”

‘’Tis sad to watch Time’s desolating hand
Doom noblest things to premature decay:
The feudal court, the patriarchal sway
Of Kings, the cheerful homage of a land
Unskilled in treason, every social band
That taught to rule with sweetness, and obey
With dignity,――swept, one by one, away!
While proud empirics rule, in fell command.

Yet, Christian! faint not at the sickening sight,
Nor vainly strive with that Supreme Decree.
Thou hast a treasure and an armoury
Locked to the spoiler yet; thy shafts are bright.
Faint not: Heaven’s Keys are more than sceptred might,
Their Guardians more than King or Sire, to thee.’

‘WEAKNESS OF NATURE.

‘“Be strong, and He shall comfort thine heart.”

‘Lord, I have fasted, I have prayed,
And sackcloth has my girdle been;
To purge my soul I have essayed
With hunger blank and vigil keen.
O God of mercy! why am I
Still haunted by the self I fly?

Sackcloth is a girdle good:
O bind it round thee still!
Fasting, it is Angels’ food,
And JESUS loved the night-air chill.
Yet think not prayer and fast were given
To make one step ’twixt earth and Heaven.[142]

The following fragmentary lines are appended to the poem as given in the _Remains_, though they do not, of course, appear in _Lyra Apostolica_:

‘As well might sun and rain contending
Their sweet influence array
On new-fallen seed descending,
To raise a forest in a day.
Think’st thou prayer and fast alone
Can animate a heart of stone?

_It must be rooted in charity._

_Thinkest thou art fit for fasting at all yet?_

The food of Saints is not for thee!’

From poetical ‘dotings,’ Hurrell, having reached England, throws himself gladly into the interests of the young scientist his brother, who was already at work on the unique experiments concerning the resistance and propulsion of ships, which now stand connected, all over the world, with his successful name. He was going forward to be, as Hurrell anxiously wished, no ‘mere engineer,’ no ‘Liberal,’ _i.e._, agnostic or materialist, ‘at heart.’

To WILLIAM FROUDE, July 11, 1833.

‘… I cannot understand how the dock-gates can make any further resistance to the water after the curvature has been squatted out of them, nor how, if the curvature is right, the pressure should have any tendency to alter it. Tell me if you succeed in getting a verdict against them; also, how your resistance experiments succeed. I will never believe that a sail will do as much work if you split it in two; but, if R ∝ area, you might have each cloth independent, and all would do as well. I never gave you an answer about the Book of Job, for I cannot get a distinct idea of its argument. It is said to be a discussion on the moral government of God; but my view of it is not more distinct than what ladies get of Butler’s _Analogy_.’

Honest Hurrell and his baffled Willy were looking for the sort of intellectual company which misery is said to love, and found it in ‘ladies.’ These, as yet, were certainly busier with worsted samplers than with the problems of the educated.

On July 14, the day of the storming of the feudal Bastille, came the formal start of another revolution which had a quieter, but no less ominous foot. Mr. Keble mounted the pulpit stair of S. Mary-the-Virgin’s at Oxford, and preached his memorable Assize Sermon, which went to press under its title of _National Apostasy_. It served as a bugle to let men know that the work of recapturing Faith for England had begun, and that ‘things have come to the pretty pass’ (in Lord Melbourne’s celebrated expression), ‘that religion is to invade the sphere of private life!’ There had been long preliminary agitation, and much personal consciousness, especially on Newman’s part and on Froude’s, of ‘a work to do in England.’